BT to UK Infinity subscribers: no more usage caps!

United Kingdom subscribers to BT's Total Broadband and Infinity services will …

Here's something we don't see very often: an ISP dropping its usage caps and telling subscribers to download away. United Kingdom subscribers to BT's Total Broadband and Infinity fiber services will soon be able to download as much data as they want, the company claims.

"As BT continues to invest in the network and network bandwidth we can now remove these restrictions and ensure the experience of the wider customer base," declared Mayuresh Thavapalan, general manager of Consumer Broadband at BT Retail. "On completion there will be no individual user controls targeted at atypical users on our BT Total Broadband and BT Infinity products."

At this point BT Infinity advertises "up to" 40Mbps download speeds and 2Mbps upload speeds for £20 a month plus a £50 activation fee (it's actually around 33Mbps, according to Ofcom). But reports say that BT's Total broadband Option 3 and Infinity Option 2 services slow down when subscriber usage goes past 300GB.

We took a look at the BT Fair Usage policy page, which cap lower cost plans at 10 and 40GB, but mention no specific ceiling for those higher priced services. The document notes that those options allow "unlimited" downloads and uploads, protecting customers from being charged for over-use. "However, this does not preclude BT from reducing your speed if you are a heavy user in order to protect the experience for the rest of our customers," the page adds.

An asterisk next to the unlimited-word cautions that this is "Subject to Network Management."

"Customers who are classified as very heavy users will experience significantly reduced speed at peak times (typically 5pm-midnight every day but these times may change depending on the demand on the network) for a period of 30 days, or for as long as very heavy use continues," BT warns. "This applies to customers on all Options."

That will continue, Thavapalan says. A "traffic management" policy will remain, "when the network is busy."

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.